


Experimenting

by AshsHorrorShow



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bi-Curiosity, F/M, Friendship, Implied Sexual Content, Izaya is the Lab Rat, M/M, One-Sided Feelings Hinted, Raijin Days, Raira, Shinra Wants to Make Sure He Actually Doesn't Like Men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 09:59:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11400249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshsHorrorShow/pseuds/AshsHorrorShow
Summary: “So what you’re saying is you’re using me like some sort of lab rat for your own experiment?” Izaya Orihara said from his desk, one eyebrow raised questioningly.“Pretty much, yeah,” Shinra Kishitani said honestly, a pleasant smile on his face as he shamelessly said those words.





	Experimenting

“So what you’re saying is you’re using me like some sort of lab rat for your own experiment?” Izaya Orihara said from his desk, one eyebrow raised questioningly. 

“Pretty much, yeah,” Shinra Kishitani said honestly, a pleasant smile on his face as he shamelessly said those words. It was the truth after all.

Now, despite popular belief, Shinra Kishitani did in fact have at least somewhat of a heart locked away in his body. Shocking, he knew. Even he had found himself questioning that fact at some points. But there was no denying it: he had a heart and it was full of love for Celty Sturluson.

Shinra had no doubt what he felt towards the dullahan was love. As a doctor-in-training, he was able to accurately diagnose that he had all the symptoms: from the butterflies in his stomach when she did the smallest of gestures to the fact that she never failed to make him smile to the fact that she never left his mind. Shinra couldn’t deny it. Somewhere along the line, he had fallen in love with the dullahan. 

For a while, he considered this more a curse than a blessing. In a particular angst-ridden night, he had considered himself to be like a tragic character in a play - forever doomed to have an unrequited love. After all, for a while, he was convinced that Celty hated his guts. Not that he blamed her. He knew his wretched father had done horrible things to her and he had sat there and watched. But still, even with that knowledge, the idea his love would go forever unrequited hurt.

But when he began paying attention a little more… some part of him began questioning if Celty really did hate him. She never overtly typed anything and could still act somewhat cold… but she did small things. Like the fact that she would ask him how his day was going whenever he came home from school. Or the fact that she would go grocery shopping for him so he could have material to make dinner (she had attempted to cook before but those experiments had ended with Shinra having to grab the fire extinguisher) and every time she went to another city, she would never fail to bring him a treat of some kind, even if he never said anything about it. She would watch movies with him and would even play games with him every now and again. Hell, she would even lecture him about what he ate and when to go to bed, as if she was worried about his health.

She had to care about him a little to bother to do any of that, right?

Cynics like Izaya Orihara might spread doubt about her caring, saying something about how he was projecting on her and making a foolish mistake on his part, but Shinra knew better. Part of him liked to think if Celty truly didn’t care about him, then she would’ve left him years ago. After all, she didn’t necessarily have to take care of him anymore. 

But he also knew not to get too far ahead of himself. Life brought many twists and turns after all, and it was unpredictable as hell. Despite how much hope he held, he knew there was still a chance that Celty might leave him one day- or at least never return his feelings. He didn’t even know if she could feel love. He liked to think she did… she seemed so human and emotional at times… but he could never know. In the end, Celty wasn’t a human. She was an ancient death fairy who might not experience emotions at all… or if she did, she might experience them way differently than a human would. Celty may never be able to physically love him at all, and he had to be prepared for that. He didn’t want to anthropomorphize her.

Hell, one day, she might finally find her missing head, forget all about him, and drive away forever. If that happened, he wanted a safety net to fall on. He wanted to feel know how wide his world of romantic possibilities was. If Celty left him, he had no doubt he would be crushed… but if he started preparing now, perhaps he could move on if it did happen.

He already knew he liked women. Celty had proven that and the wet dreams he had about her confirmed it even more. But even though Celty was the one true love of his life, he would be lying if he said he never admired a female classmate’s breasts or had a wet dream once in a blue moon about a celebrity he’d seen on television. He was a teenager after all. He had never met a girl who made him feel anything close to what Celty made him feel, but admittedly, he hadn’t been looking too hard for anyone else. He was sure if he actually spent time and looked around, he could find another girl he somewhat enjoyed being around.

So since he was able to conclude he liked women, that left the next question: what about men?

This was a little bit more of a complicated subject. He couldn’t honestly say he had ever been attracted to a guy. He could remember no intense wet dream involving a guy of any kind nor could he say that he had ever contemplated the idea of being with a man before this little journey of sexual discovery. But he didn’t necessarily think that made the answer a definite no. After all, he hadn’t been attracted to headless fairies until very recently either.

Part of him wondered if his lack of attraction towards men was simply because he’d been basically trained since birth not to think about that as an option. When he was a kid, while he certainly had no romantic inclinations of his own, the media had basically been pushing the message that boys belonged with girls and girls belonged with boys and that was just the way the world worked. Maybe he had just been preset from a young age to feel this way. To never consider the alternative.

So, Shinra decided he was just going to have to figure this out by himself. After some thought, he decided his best bet on trying to figure out how he felt was to kiss a man he felt at least somewhat close to and see if he felt anything. However, this posed another problem. He only had three friends… therefore his options were very limited and he had to weigh the consequences. After all, even with his whole ‘weird kid’ reputation with them, casually bringing up he wanted to kiss them for experimental purposes was crossing a line he’d never crossed before.

Shizuo Heiwajima was most definitely out of the question. Shinra highly doubted he would be able to get past the ‘kiss’ part of his question before Shizuo would punch him straight across the school. So for his face’s sake, asking Shizuo was a solid no.

Next, he considered Kadota Kyouhei. After all, Kadota was much less likely to punch him if he asked. However, he still couldn’t bring himself to find Kadota a viable option. To say Kadota was a friend of his was being a bit generous. After all, the two of them never quite hung out anywhere outside of school nor did Shinra ever see himself calling the kid if something bad happened. In fact, he was pretty sure only tolerated him because they happened to both be mutual friends of Shizuo. He couldn’t prove anything, but he always thought he saw the boy looking at him Izaya and him in veiled annoyance, as if they were just nuisances he had to deal with.

Plus Kadota had a girlfriend at the moment and he wasn’t patient enough to wait for that relationship to inevitably fail so…

That only left Izaya Orihara. Shinra had pretty much known it would be him from the very beginning.

Now, he knew most other people in his position would begin considering Shizuo or Kadota as options again if it meant avoiding Izaya, but he was not one of them.  
Don’t get him wrong, Izaya Orihara was a terrible person. He knew this fact and he would say it out loud to anyone - even Izaya Orihara himself. But even with this knowledge, he still liked Izaya Orihara as a friend pretty well.

He couldn’t even really explain to himself what drew him to the kid. Maybe it was the fact that Izaya was so smart and so unique when compared to the rest of his classmates and he was able to talk about things with Izaya he couldn’t talk to other kids about. Shizuo was a great friend, but Shinra couldn’t exactly have an in-depth conversation with him about science or other complex things. And while Shizuo’s copious amounts of strength certainly was unusual, Shinra had learned that the blond was actually astonishingly ordinary once he got to know him better. It was Izaya who was the unusual one - from his eccentric behavior to his delusions about himself to his whole belief system and how he viewed the world. Izaya was unpredictable and always kept someone on their toes. Shinra just couldn’t help but feel fascinated by him, terrible as he was.

Besides, it wasn’t like Shinra was a holy saint either so…

Izaya not being like everyone else and not being easily offended was going to work to his advantage. At least he hoped.

Which brought them to present time: it was after school and the two of them were in an empty classroom and Shinra had just presented his idea. He’d explained his dilemma and had made it pretty clear Izaya was serving as his means to an end.

Most people would be flabbergasted at Shinra’s startling rudeness, but just as Shinra predicted, Izaya was not. The black-haired kid just let out a laugh, shaking his head. Clucking his tongue, he said, “Neh, neh, you are truly a cruel person, Shinra. You made no attempt to spare my feelings at all.”

Shinra snickered and grinned, “Feelings? Since when did you have those?”

“Fair enough, fair enough,” Izaya allowed, raising his hands up defensively, before he sobered up and said, “Now, tell me… what is it in for me? All I heard in that deal was I get to be a lab rat and have your gross lips on me. I see no benefit for me at all. I am not a charity, Shinra.”

“You’ve never kissed anyone. You get to see what all the hype is about,” Shinra answered immediately with a small smile.

“Excuse me, that is awfully presumptuous of you, Shinra,” Izaya said, “I have a lot of people who are interested in me. Who is to say I have never kissed anyone before?”

“You do have a lot of morons interested, however, once they all learn what a terrible person you are, they smartly decide to back out,” Shinra said. 

“You got me there…” Izaya said with a chuckle. After a second, he said, “Fine, I’ll do it.” Shinra was mentally cheering, but Izaya quickly interrupted by saying, “But I must ask, why me of all people?”

Because Izaya Orihara, aesthetically speaking was an attractive male. Because Izaya was someone he had at least somewhat of a bond with. Because Izaya was cool about things like this. All of these answers were too emotional and too kind for Shinra’s liking. “Because I am desperate and Shizuo would punch me in the face.”

Izaya smirked and nodded, “Fair enough.”

“Besides, aren’t you bi?”

Izaya flinched at that a little, before looking at him solidly and saying, “I don’t know what I am and I certainly wouldn’t tell a creep like you. Besides, the question isn’t my sexuality isn’t it, it’s yours.”

Shinra grinned and echoed Izaya’s earlier response, “Fair enough.” He knew that while Izaya was very nosy about other people, he didn’t like when the same was done to him. Shinra knew when it was best to quit. Besides, as Izaya mentioned, it wasn’t exactly like his sexuality mattered in this little experiment.

So, leaning down, before his mind could make him hesitate, Shinra pressed his lips against Izaya’s in a chaste kiss, trying his best to make it linger a little and see something within himself. Izaya’s lips were actually softer than he imagined they would be and he couldn’t say the experience was unpleasant … a little weird but he supposed that was because he never thought he’d find himself in a position where he was kissing Izaya Orihara. However, he wasn’t feeling anything else in his stomach. No excitement, no pleasure, nothing.

Pulling away, Shinra wiped at his lips and said, “Ugh… so disappointing. Guess that was all for nothing.”

Izaya looked at him for a bit before saying, “Sorry to disappoint. If I can’t make you like men, I don’t see who else will though so I guess you really are just straight.”

Shinra grinned at Izaya’s bad joke before saying, “What about you? Learn anything about yourself during that kiss?”

Izaya threw him a look before saying, “That, my dear Shinra, is a secret for me to keep.”

Shinra raised a skeptical eyebrow, wondering what was with the secrecy before shrugging. He was used to Izaya being cryptic. Izaya for all he knew didn’t learn anything at all and was just trying to act mysterious to keep his interest up. Either way, Shinra couldn’t say he was too curious.

“I guess Celty is the one true love for me,” Shinra said dreamily, thinking about the dullahan which caused Izaya to roll his eyes as he stood up and collected his books off his desk. 

“That poor woman…” Looking at Shinra he said, “Want to go to Russian Sushi with me?”

Shinra smiled and nodded in agreement, glad that things hadn’t radically changed in their friendship or how they felt about one another. 

Or so he hoped.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the rather weak ending. I have had this idea for months and months but I could never think of a solid way to end this. I didn't want answers to be clear cut. 
> 
> Personally, while Shinzaya is not like an OTP of OTPs, I do like it. I find Shinra and Izaya's friendship dynamic very interesting and appreciate any chance to explore it more - both platonic and romantic. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed. As always critique is wanted, and have a good day!!!


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